Once upon a time, in a country far away, students had to memorize stuff. They knew the names of presidents, states, rivers, inventors, countries, books. Why, they even knew dates! They could recite poetry! They could actually find Alaska on a map.

These were rough and ready times, and it was every student for himself, as they worked 18 hours each day to memorize useless information so they could regurgitate trivia on worthless exams.

This, of course, was not the view at the time. This is the view of our elite educators today, which is what we need to talk about.

To set the stage, here’s a report from the front lines circa 2012: “Year after year I get kids in 7th grade who cannot add or subtract numbers in double digits, do not know their multiplication tables, do not know the difference between a city and a state, or a city and a country, have no idea where any country is except Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and the US. Think Paris is a country near Turkey, could be easily convinced that China is in Africa, can\’t tell time on an analog clock, have no idea when the Civil War was or who fought it or why or who won… Can\’t tell you what 50% of 6 is… They can\’t spell ‘would’ or ‘because’. (Not all of them, but huge numbers, are at this level.)”

Clearly, these students don’t know more than three or four facts. If you watch Jay Leno go Jaywalking, you see articulate adults who think that Germany fought in our Civil War. It’s touching how little people know these days, touching in the way that something feeble and pathetic is touching.

Meanwhile, as foundational knowledge of every kind fades into the sunset, our Education Establishment ratchets up the attack on something that doesn’t exist, namely, rote memorization. This myth is said to be evil.

Rote memorization is the whipping boy, the bete noire, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the number 666, and sand in your bathing suit. It is everything bad in the world, according to our elite educators.

The disconnect here is so total that one can only conclude that the Education Establishment lives on the dark side of the moon, visiting Earth occasionally to check on abuses in the classroom. When a student is asked to memorize six times seven, the visiting educators throw up their hands, hoot in horror, and rush back to the other side of the moon.

Their last Words of Wisdom are always the same: we need critical thinking skills!

School district leaders in Iowa, according to recent newspaper reports, “want to find ways to get both teachers and pupils to reach into the realm of ‘higher thinking skills.'”

In fact, these education experts believe, children will score higher, their behavior will improve, and this “achievement will likely spill into a child’s family and community, so that in time, crime rates and poverty decrease, overall health will increase, and tax rates will stabilize.” All this if schools will only reach into the realm of higher thinking skills.

What we need to do, according to a superintendent, is “to get staff to do inquiry-based learning processes with the kids so they’re not just regurgitating facts.”

There it is, The Problem. These kids are just regurgitating facts. They know thousands of facts and they vomit them up on the exam, and that’s bad.

But in the real world, we all know, these kids don’t know many facts. In this they are like the Education Establishment which created them.

A principal, according to the newspaper, noted that “administrators want to spend more time in the classroom, but it is difficult to find the time when overseeing an entire building, especially when that includes handling discipline problems. She suggested that if more teachers ask higher-thinking questions and more pupils improve and their behavior improves as well, she will need less time dealing with behavior and can spend more time helping teachers improve.”

A superintendent referenced a book which “provides research stating that better students lead to better communities. He said the evidence suggests higher-level thinking is key to taking schools to the next level.” Apparently, all that stands in the way is facts.

Clearly, the Education Establishment hates facts. These people surely don’t believe in guns, but if they did, they would want to turn their assault weapons on facts. Facts would be shot into little pieces, ground up in the garbage disposal, and made to disappear forever.

Some of these quotes make me think of “one flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” If these elite educators were capable of critical thinking, they would know they sound a bit loopy.

Maybe schools went too far 50 or 100 years ago. But you really can’t learn most subjects unless you do memorize the basic information in that subject. Now, this is completely obvious in the matter of something like French. You want to learn French, memorize 5,000 words at least, grammar, pronunciation, then you’re in business.

You want to learn history, you have to learn who Napoleon is, and where the Rocky Mountains are, because people going back and forth across them are part of American history.

This is obvious to any adult intelligence. But not to the people in our Education Establishment. They want you to do critical thinking about American history without knowing any American history. A preposterous notion.

If schools would start in K and first grade, teaching one or two facts each day, then children would build up the broad foundational base that is essential for all learning and education. No foundational base? Learning will happen very slowly if at all.

But here’s how you know that the Education Establishment is not merely loopy but dishonest. They do make children memorize things all the time but only if it’s a total waste of time. Think about sight-words.

Children are told they must memorize these graphic designs–hundreds of them–and be able to name them with instant recall. This practice will cripple reading, it’s hard work, and a total waste of time; but the Education Establishment pushes it all the time, and has since 1931. A child in fourth grade might know a total of 400 facts, all of them sight-words! Nothing else. All that energy went down a bottomless pit. This same energy would make the average kid a scholar. As it is, the kid is both ignorant and illiterate.

That’s the disingenuous pattern. If something would be good for children to know, our Education Establishment tends to be against it. If learning something is a waste of time and otherwise destructive, then children must memorize it.

The Education Establishment has set up a phony conflict between facts and higher thinking. That alleged conflict is a Big Lie and the real myth. Facts are the necessary foundation for higher thinking. No facts, no higher thinking.

It’s up to each school and teacher to transcend the dreary nonsense coming down from on high. Knowledge is a good thing. Memorizing some facts is not only essential, it’s fun.

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(For more on this debate, see “45: The Crusade Against Knowledge–The Campaign Against Memory” on the writer’s site Improve-Education.org.)

Bruce Deitrick Price is the founder of Improve-Education.org, an education and intellectual site.
One focus is reading; see \”42: Reading Resources.\”

Price is an author, artist and poet. His fifth book is \”THE EDUCATION ENIGMA–What Happened to American Education.\”

Bruce Deitrick Price is the founder of http://www.Improve-Education.org, an education and intellectual site.
One focus is problems in the schools; see \”56: Top 10 Worst Ideas in Education.\”
Price is an author, artist and poet. His fifth book is \”THE EDUCATION ENIGMA.\”

Author Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is the founder of Improve-Education.org, an education and intellectual site.
One focus is reading; see \”42: Reading Resources.\”

Price is an author, artist and poet. His fifth book is \”THE EDUCATION ENIGMA–What Happened to American Education.\”

Category: Education
Keywords: K-12, public schools, knowledge, memorization, SAT\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\’s, Common Core, socialism, Dewey, facts